


a good Georgia boy

by tinybowties



Series: some men are born for adventure; leonard mccoy would prefer not [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Aro-ace Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Aromantic Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Asexual Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:42:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27012211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinybowties/pseuds/tinybowties
Summary: Leonard's always known he'd have to get married someday. At least with Jocelyn, he knows he won't disappoint his Ma.
Series: some men are born for adventure; leonard mccoy would prefer not [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1971613
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	a good Georgia boy

**Author's Note:**

> This is purely just self-indulgent projection but I'll stop headcanoning my favourite characters as aspec when I'm dead. Written in like 2 hours, no beta, please forgive the abundance of Southern stereotypes, I'm just here to correct the grievous lack of any aspec Bones tags on this site.

Leonard is raised on the Good Book, of course. He's a Southern boy, a Georgia boy, and some things don't change for all history.

He stops believing in it himself when he's--oh, fourteen, maybe fifteen. But a Southern boy in Georgia, raised on the Good Book, knows what's expected of him: he'll marry, have children, and probably even take those children to church. Be fruitful and multiply in number, the Good Book says, and he can see it in his Ma's eyes when he comes home from the school dance with a pretty girl on his arm. He can see his Ma imagining the children, planning all the ways she'll spoil them, and he decides then that he'll marry Jocelyn. He's always hated to disappoint his Ma.

He hates to disappoint his Daddy, too, so it's Ole Miss he goes off to after high school, even though he'd like to stay in Georgia. There's good schools in Georgia, but Ole Miss is his Daddy's school and he's got the grades for a full ride scholarship.

Leonard doesn't come home from Mississippi much, those four years. He misses the old peach trees shading Ma's front porch, the smell of cobbler mingling with the Sunday afternoon pork and greens, the dogs barking in the yard, his brothers tumbling in the old wood shed and his Daddy's sure hands patching the cuts when they fall.

But it's a full day's trip from Ole Miss back home, from first light to sundown, taking the old roads, and Leonard can't stomach the two hours it would take on a shuttle. He comes back on reading week instead, and in the breaks between semesters, and never really gets his fill of seeing his family's faces before he's back to school again, hundreds of miles from home.

He always makes sure to visit Jocelyn when he's home, too. It takes away precious time he could be spending in the kitchen with Ma, or helping Jenny and Calvin with their science homework, or sitting with his Daddy in the late evening, reading the news on their PADDs and commenting now and then on some new political story. But it's not bad, those few days a year he spends with her: she's a sweet girl, and her face lights up when she talks about the career she's planning, a science major herself. And best, best of all, is this: Jocelyn was raised on the Good Book too, so she knows what's expected of her. Be fruitful and multiply in number, oh yes, but not--not until marriage.

They're not married yet, but when he's so far away from the Georgia he loves, and his fellow students are throwing their parties and inviting him to join in their... pleasantries, it's an easy excuse.

"I got a girl back home," he says, drawing on the shield of that particular Southern charm, that tells the people around him he's a good Georgia boy, raised on the Good Book. "We're waiting until marriage."

He doesn't escape from all Ole Miss's assembled vices that way. He learns the taste of whiskey, of scotch, of gin, and he learns he likes them all well enough--better from the middle shelf than the bottom, but there are days when he'll take whatever cheap bottle will leave him with a migraine in the morning.

This much would disappoint his Ma, he knows, and his Daddy too, so he doesn't touch a drop of the stuff when he's home. But he saves himself for marriage--tells himself he does it to make his Ma proud, because he's a Southern boy, a Georgia boy, raised on the Good Book, after all--and then his four years are done, he's graduating, he's coming home, and for once he takes the shuttle.

His heart is racing with a sick kind of dread, face pinched and beaded with sweat. His stomach twists and twists itself up in knots, until he's sure he won't make the full flight without emptying his guts across the shuttle bay. He's always suffered from aviophobia, so it's easy to tell himself it's just the shuttle that's got him so out of sorts, and not the ring in its neat little box in his jacket pocket.


End file.
